Sign Up for Swamplot Emails:

The Two New Montrose Coffee Bars Coming to Westheimer

Who’s going to lease those small retail spaces being developed along with Uchi’stakeover of the former Felix Mexican Restaurant space in Montrose? Here’s one answer: Opening later this year just behind the restaurant will be Southside Espresso, a new retail coffee house venture (and beer-and-wine bar) from Sean Marshall, the proprietor of Fusion Beans. The 714-sq.-ft. space has an address of 904B Westheimer, but the front door faces Grant St. The coffee shop will be open from 7 am to 11 pm and allow customers to use the same bathroom facilities as Uchi patrons.

Also helping to tip Westheimer’s boiling point a little further east: another new coffee shop, just announced for the recently re-muraled former Mary’s, Naturally space at 1018 Westheimer. Picky caffeine prophets David Buehrer and Ecky Prabanto will be moving up from their popular perch at Greenway Coffee & Tea in the basement food court of Greenway Plaza building number 5. (They plan to keep that small but popular shop running, though.) Their new Montrose venture, Blacksmith, will likely include “a small, but full kitchen” when it opens next spring, Buehrer reports.

***

Blacksmith will be leasing the space from the building’s new owners, Bobby Heugel and Kevin Floyd of Anvil Bar & Refuge. Heugel and Floyd’s new craft beer bar, the Hay Merchant, is already under construction across Waugh Dr. in the old Chances Bar space. Next door in the same building, former Catalan chef Chris Shepherd will be carving up animal parts and serving them in his next restaurant, Underbelly.